Bernardo Storace

This Italian composer may have come from the northern part of the peninsula, denoted only by his style, though nothing more is known of his life than his own attribution on the title of his surviving music, Here he wrote that he was the assistant master of music to the senate at Messina, Sicily. Sorace is important because of his concentrated effort to expose as many variations on an extended twenty four bar theme or four bar phrase over a bass sequence of keys. "Selva di varie compositioni d'intavolatura per cimbalo ed organo" is Storace's surviving body of work. These compositions show Storace to have a fine sense of key orientation focusing on I, V and IV harmonies. This is particularly noted in his toccatas. His ricercares are more dynamic one which is separated into three sections by theme containing a fourth section which unites the other three by combining the themes. ~ Keith Johnson